Carolina Crimes: Case Files of a Forensic Photographer

By Rita Y. Shuler

A former forensic photographer leads readers through the twists and turns of twelve homicide cases that gripped South Carolina during her career.
 
Rita Y. Shuler’s fascination with the criminal mind began with her exposure as a young girl to a 1953 double-homicide that shocked South Carolina. When she came face to face with the original case records twenty-four years later on her first day of work as a forensic photographer with South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), she was immediately hooked on a profession that took her deep into the investigation of hundreds of cases. Shuler’s firsthand experience with forensic evidence of crime scenes and the court system gives her a unique perspective on murder and its horrifying effects on public and private lives. By combining analysis of court transcripts and official statements and confessions from murderers with her own personal interactions with the key players in some of these tragic dramas, Shuler allows the reader to see into the criminal minds of notorious killers like Pee Wee Gaskins, Rudolph Tyner, Ronald “Rusty” Woomer, and Larry Gene Bell. Shuler’s study is a must for everyone fascinated by the criminal mind and by the most famous murder cases in South Carolina’s recent past.
 
Includes photos

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781614233350

Book preview

Prologue

It was a cold December afternoon in 1953. I was eight years old, and what my parents would tell me that day would be with me for the rest of my life.

The story was front-page headlines in The State newspaper.

In Pamplico, South Carolina, which was about seventy-five miles from our home in rural Orangeburg County, twenty-two-year-old Harvey B. Allen and fifteen-year-old Betty Claire Cain left for a date on Sunday night, December 6, 1953. Their families reported them missing when they failed to return home later that evening.

Allen’s bloodstained car, a 1953 Plymouth, was found by schoolchildren around nine o’clock the next morning behind a nearby school. The front window on the driver’s side was broken out, and some of Allen’s clothes were thrown around inside the car. Blood and strands of auburn hair were found in the trunk.

Without delay, an intensive manhunt was launched for the pair. Around six o’clock that evening, Miss Cain’s body was found in a shallow grave of straw, dirt and gravel at a popular area known as lover’s lane or the bluff to everyone in Pamplico. Her head was missing.

Just yards away from the decapitated body were broken glass and bloodstains in the dirt. A bloody piece of tree limb approximately two and a half feet long was found a short distance away.

The bluff overlooking the Great Pee Dee River is about three miles outside of Pamplico down a country road lined with cornfields and trees. During further investigation around the area, a tee shirt belonging to Allen was found in a tobacco barn near a fishpond. Evidence that a car had bogged down nearby was also found.

I held on tight to my mama’s hand as she was reading this. It was the first time I had heard of something so horrible. I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head in fear of the monster out there that could do something so horrible as this.

We followed the details of the story in The State. On Wednesday, December 9, Mrs. Rosa Graham, who lived about two miles from the bluff, contacted law enforcement officers and informed them that car lights woke her up after midnight on Sunday night. The car drove by her house on a dirt road that dead-ended at an old, abandoned well. The well was camouflaged by cornstalks and was not plainly visible from the main road leading to the bluff.

Checking out all possible leads, officers went to the area. There in the well, they discovered Mr. Allen’s body and Miss Cain’s head. They both had gunshot wounds to the head. Burlap cotton sheets, a rubber car mat and a lady’s coat were also found in the well.

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Assistant Chief J.P. Strom and Lieutenant Millard Cate assisted with the crime scene investigation. They found several sets of shoeprints around the well. Later that day, Deputy Sheriff Ray Shupe found a muddy, bloodstained shovel under Mrs. Graham’s house.

Then came a break in the investigation. Mrs. Graham’s daughter, Margaret, who lived about a half-mile from the well, reported she had not seen her husband, J.W. Page, since the Sunday night the slayings occurred until the news of the discovery of the body and head in the well ran in the newspaper. He had come home, packed some clothes and said he was going back to Tarboro, North Carolina, to see his lawyer. She believed he had escaped from a North Carolina prison camp.

A check of Raleigh, North Carolina, prison records showed Raymond Carney, a thirty-eight-year-old black male who also used the alias J.W. Page, had escaped from a Wilson County prison camp in North Carolina in March of that same year. He had a long list of arrests and was described as cunning and mean. A photograph of Carney was obtained and identified by his wife and mother-in-law as the man they knew as J.W. Page. His wife also told officers he had a snub-nosed revolver.

At the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division in Columbia, Lieutenant Cate performed ballistic tests on the bullets from the victims. The results revealed that the pair had been shot in the head with a .38-caliber revolver. Tests also revealed a bullet found in a tree in front of Carney’s house was from the same gun that killed the victims.

Wanted posters were circulated, and the wide manhunt began for the six-foot, 185-pound Raymond B. Carney, aka J.W. Page.

Rewards were offered for evidence sufficient to convict the killer or killers. The State reported Governor James F. Byrnes announced that the state would pay $1,000. The Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, the News and Courier, offered a $500 reward because of its interest in law and order. The Negro Baptist and Missionary Board of South Carolina was stirred up by the murders and offered a $200 reward. The Ira E. Brown Express Co. of Florence, Conway and Charleston offered $250, the town of Pamplico offered $200, individual citizens of the town offered $300 and Florence County Sheriff John Hannah offered $50.

Many possible sightings of Carney were reported and checked out in South Carolina and North Carolina, but all proved to be unfounded.

Then the news everyone wanted to hear appeared in The State on Sunday, December 20. Just before 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 19, Langston (Peanut) Cox of Johnsonville and Delmus Moore and Hugh Turner of Pamplico were hunting birds in a patch of woods near Johnsonville, South Carolina, sixteen miles from the scene of the murders. They spotted a black man in the woods acting suspiciously. As they approached him, he walked away quickly. They kept him in sight as he stopped at a nearby house and started talking to a man outside. One of the hunters knew the man who lived at the house. He walked up to the owner of the house and asked him if he knew the man. He said, No, I’ve never seen this man before, and that’s when all three hunters turned their shotguns on Carney. Tired, weak and dirty, Carney gave up peacefully, and they carried him to the Johnsonville jail.

When news got out that Carney had been caught, crowds of angry citizens flooded the grounds around the Johnsonville jail. Governor Brynes quickly sent orders for Carney to be brought to the State Penitentiary in Columbia and placed in the maximum-security building for safekeeping.

Carney admitted to the slayings of the couple and became very talkative and anxious as he gave his statement.

I needed some money, so I went to the river and waited for a car. I waited about an hour and a half, but no car come then, so I started home. When I got to the road across a field, I saw a car going to the river, so I went back to the river and got close enough to hear them talking. I watched them for a while, then went up and busted the window and jerked the door open. I said this is a stick-up, and the man grabbed my coat and arm. I pulled back, and when I got my hand free, I shot him. The girl started screaming, and I pulled her out the car and laid her down on the ground and pulled her pants down. I knew she would tell, so I shot her, too. I put her back in the car and carried both of them to where the car got in a bog. I walked to my house almost a mile away and got several planks to get the car out the bog. After I got out of the bog, I went back to the bluff and cut the girl’s head off with my pocketknife so it would take longer to identify her. I was going to cut the boy’s head off, too, but got scared because it was taking so long. I buried the girl’s body at the bluff and thought about the well behind Mrs. Rosa’s house. I got a shovel from Mrs. Rosa’s house, and some burlap sheets from a tobacco barn, so I took the boy’s body and the girl’s head, wrapped them up in the sheets and put them in the well. I sort of figured putting them in different places would confuse the law. I threw the shovel under Mrs. Rosa’s house, and later on buried the gun behind my house. I drove the car to the school and left it. I had stole a watch and $14 from the boy. I stayed in the area around my house and the bluff when ya’ll was looking for the killer. I was living in tobacco barns and deserted shacks, and eating taters, and what I could steal from people’s gardens. This is the truth as near as I can remember it. I mean to tell the truth, so I can get right with God, and ask him day by day to forgive me for this awful sin I done.

A pocketknife was found on Carney when he was captured. The gun was located behind Carney’s house where he told officers he had buried it along a path.

Lieutenant Cate performed bullet comparison tests on Carney’s gun. Results showed the bullets from the victims and bullets found in the tree in Carney’s yard were fired from Carney’s gun.

The Florence Morning News reported that this normally quiet farming community was turned into a tourist Mecca, despite a steadily falling rain. Observers estimated more than fifty thousand persons visited the scene. My parents, brother and myself were among the onlookers. The bluff had a wet coldness about it that made me shake all over. The dirt path leading to the well was hardened like concrete by the thousands of footsteps of the curious onlookers.

My mama stayed close to me and held on to me as I looked over into the cold, abandoned well. She caught my shirttail and said in her soft voice, Don’t you fall in there. I just stood there staring down into the well, thinking about the body and head that lay there for two days and nights before they were found.

Unbeknownst to me, this would be my first crime scene, and it would surface again on my first day as forensic photographer of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

Raymond Carney went to trial in March 1954, just three months after the murders. It took about fifty minutes to draw a twelve-man all white jury. The trial took only one day. No testimony was offered by the defense. The jury deliberated approximately one hour and thirty minutes.¹

Carney was found guilty and the verdict carried no recommendation for mercy, making the death penalty mandatory.² Judge Steve Griffith sentenced him to death in the state’s electric chair between 4:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., May 7, 1954.

The Florence Morning News reported that Raymond Carney was electrocuted at seven o’clock Friday morning, May 7, 1954. Fifty-eight persons witnessed the execution.

This was my first memory of the electric chair and an electrocution.

I grew up in the small rural community of Providence, which is about sixty miles from Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, and sixty miles from Charleston, the historic port city on South Carolina’s coast.

After graduating from a class of thirty-eight students at Holly Hill High School, I attended the Orangeburg Regional Hospital School of Radiologic (x-ray) Technology in Orangeburg, South Carolina. After training, I began my profession as radiologic technologist at Providence Hospital in Columbia. Interestingly enough, the hospital shared the same name as the community where I grew up.

Betty Claire Cain and Harvey B. Allen. Courtesy of The State.

Wanted poster for Raymond Carney, alias J.W. Page. Courtesy of SLED.

Sketch of scene of Pamplico double homicide. Courtesy of the Florence Morning News.

SLED Agents Melton and Patterson with Raymond Carney at the South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia after his capture in Johnsonville. Courtesy of The State.

There were times when x-rays were needed to aid with death investigations. On one occasion, I assisted the pathologist and a police officer in the morgue to x-ray a homicide victim who had been shot in the chest. The pathologist needed to see the location of the bullet to retrieve it for investigative purposes. The entrance wound was clearly visible in his chest, so I x-rayed his chest. No bullet was found. The pathologist then requested a complete body x-ray. The bullet was located in the knee area. It had entered the chest, lodged in an artery and traveled with the blood flow down to the knee.

My interest in forensic science and criminal investigations grew over the years. Twelve years into my x-ray career, I attended an x-ray seminar in San Francisco, California, and enrolled in a two-day course, forensic pathology, which showed photographs and radiographs of physical evidence graphically presented in the court and legal system. I flashed back to memories of the double murder in 1953. I was totally captivated with this incredible forensic science that puts together the truth of such horrendous acts.

I’ve always felt dreams are never too big or too small. The important thing is to have a dream and go for it. So I did. I had to be a part of this forensic field. Photography had been a hobby of mine since my parents gave me a Kodak brownie camera when I was nine years old. I figured I was already one step ahead.

Two weeks after returning to South Carolina, contacts and plans fell into place so smoothly it was almost scary. I knew this was telling me all was right with my choice of changing careers and my life. It came easily. Each step led me in the direction of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) Forensic Photography Laboratory.

October 7, 1977, was my first day with SLED. Only minutes after I arrived that morning, my orientation put me face to face again with the 1953 double murder in Pamplico.

As I toured the crime scene unit, which I would be working closely with, Lieutenants Bill Anderson and Ira Parnell opened a file drawer and showed me an eight-by-ten photo of a decapitated head. Lieutenant Anderson said, You will be working with cases like this.

Surprised looks came on their faces as I said, I know this case, and told them my story of living through it when I was eight years old.

They showed me the original case file, which included investigative documents and crime scene and evidential photographs. They walked me to the forensics lab display case. In the case was Carney’s knife, the knife that was able to cut through a spine and sever a head from a body. I just stood there staring at the knife. In disbelief, I thought, My God, it’s just a regular pocketknife.

Raymond Carney’s knife on display at SLED. Photo by Rita Y. Shuler.

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is a state level law enforcement and investigative agency with statewide jurisdiction. SLED was created in 1947 by an executive order issued by then-Governor J. Strom Thurmond at the request of the state’s sheriffs and police chiefs. It began its operation with approximately fifteen employees. The governor of South Carolina appoints the chief of SLED. SLED has had four chiefs since it was established in 1947.

SLED’s first chief, Joel Davis Townsend, was truly a pioneer in South Carolina law enforcement. At the age of eighteen, he joined the Saluda town police and became chief before he reached the age of twenty. He later served with the Greenwood police force, leaving there to become a deputy United States marshal for the western South Carolina district. In 1929, he became one of the first five members of the South Carolina Highway Patrol and was assigned as chief officer of patrol activities for the First Army maneuvers in 1941. For this work, he received a citation from Lieutenant General Hugh S. Drum

Reviews for Carolina Crimes

[sehusman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read CAROLINA CRIMES in one sitting. The subject had a morbid fascination, but the presentation was intelligent, compassionate and real. Schuler’s unique perspective, from the criminal investigator’s side, gave the stories in her book a humanity and hope that is usually missing from the newspaper accounts. I think Rita Schuler inspires the crime fighter in all of us. 10/26/2006